


Helpless

by KatieComma



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 10:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15265221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/pseuds/KatieComma
Summary: Post Infinity WarNat gets a call from Clint just after the snap of Thanos' fingers.He's grieving and he needs his best friend.





	Helpless

**Author's Note:**

> This has been floating in my head since I saw IW... and I just needed to get it down.
> 
> I may add more to it later down the line... but for now I'm just going to leave it short like it is.

Nat didn’t wait for the door of the Quinjet to lower all the way before she jumped out onto the grass and bolted for the house. It was dark, and there were no lights on.

The call had been brutal. More so because she’d been so far away. Clint’s voice had been hollow, or maybe it was the long distance call: “Nat,” was all he’d said at first, and then he’d asked her what was going on.

Nat burst through the door of the farm house. It was never locked. Out in the middle of nowhere, there was no reason to lock the door; Nothing bad would get you. 

She didn’t need to go far to find him. He was slumped against the kitchen cabinets staring at the dining room table, knees tented, forearms rested there.

In the dark she could make out the table, littered with plates full of half eaten food: pancakes, toast, and fruit, and a large clear glass carafe of bright sunny orange juice that seemed out of place in the dark room. Flies buzzed over the table, lapping at the syrup.

It had taken too long. Why hadn’t she been able to get to him sooner?

Three of the chairs crowded around the table were covered with piles of grey dust that had overflowed to the floor. The third pile rested in a small highchair.

Nat crouched down next to Clint, careful not to break his line of sight with the table just yet. His empty eyes stared out at nothing, red from crying. 

Cellphone abandoned on the floor next to him. No doubt she had been his last call. 8 hours ago. 8 long hours he’d been sitting and staring at the remains of his family. 8 hours he’d been waiting for Nat. Needing her, and she hadn’t been there.

“Clint,” she said his name softly.

He didn’t look away from the table. “Why didn’t you tell me what was happening?” Clint asked, his voice hoarse from disuse and grief.

Nat looked away from him, even though he wasn’t looking at her. Shame rose up like bile in her throat. She hadn’t even thought to let Clint know what was going on.

“We thought we could save…” she faltered. “Everyone.”

Clint’s face finally turned toward her and she used the assassin in her to quiet her emotions and look into his eyes.

“You didn’t,” he said, the warmth she had always loved in his voice gone. He held her gaze for a moment with that ice cold glare and then his expression shattered into anguish and he reached out for her.

Nat pulled him into a hug, and closed her arms around his back, squeezing compassion into him while she tried to compress her own grief into a tiny packet inside her that she wouldn’t ever open. His arms circled her neck, gripped the empty holsters on her back and pulled her against him with all his strength while he wept into her shoulder.

“I… watched… it…” Clint’s voice came out between sobs, his breath ragged and uneven against her. “Couldn’t… stop…”

“No, no,” Nat soothed. “Shh. There was nothing any of us could have done.”

Clint coughed a strangled cry against her, and she felt his tears soak through the fabric of her shirt, down to her skin. Neither of them was accustomed to feeling helpless, she knew exactly what he was going through. She put a hand up into his hair to hold him like she would a child. Like she had held Lila and Cooper and little Nathanial not so long ago.

Nat stole a look at the table and tried to reconcile each of those piles with the people she had known. The children she had know. The child that Clint and Laura had named for her, knowing that she would never have children of her own. That was it. That was the thought that broke her, and she curled her face into Clint’s neck and wept with him, their bodies shaking in unison with sorrow.


End file.
